


Everything's Always Better Whenever You Are Underdressed

by orphan_account



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-16
Updated: 2010-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-28 09:20:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Eames, despite popular belief, does know how to match his clothing. He just prefers to clash artfully. That is, until Arthur storms into his life." This is what happened after I noticed that Eames was wearing pink socks to match his shirt in Mombasa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything's Always Better Whenever You Are Underdressed

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by fishspots @ lj. Title lyric from Passion Pit's "Smile Upon Me".

Eames, despite popular belief, does know how to match his clothing. He just prefers to clash artfully.

That is, until Arthur storms into his life. Arthur with his three-piece suits and shiny shoes and perfectly slicked hair and trousers that actually fit well – a little _too_ well.

In fact, the day they meet, Arthur manages to insult Eames’ wardrobe a grand total of nineteen times.

“I’m Eames.” He holds out his hand and smiles pleasantly enough. Arthur’s dressed almost too well for a boy in his early 20s, and he’s still borderline gawky, like he doesn’t realize he’s breathtaking already, like he thinks he needs to make up for something.

“I honestly don’t understand how you found an orange and green paisley shirt to begin with,” is the first sentence Arthur says to him. “And then you decided to pair it with navy pants? Really? Are you serious right now?”

And simple as that it becomes a game.

The next day Eames saunters into the Cobbs’ living room sporting a button-up that borders on lime green and brown cords, topped with a red blazer. Arthur actually huffs like a child and rolls his eyes and shoots murderous glances for the rest of the day. To be fair Eames can’t really keep his eyes off of Arthur either, with the way that suit jacket clings to his slim shoulders and slips just above his wrists when he moves.

The first day they go under together, Arthur is wearing an impeccable black three-piece suit accentuated by a thin red tie. Eames has on a shirt that is pinstriped with just about every color imaginable. No less than eleven times Eames finds himself staring at the ceiling, ejected from the dream due to an array of “mishaps” almost as colorful as his clothing. He won’t tell Arthur this, but it’s just a week after they meet that Eames realizes that the point man does, in fact, possess imagination. He must, because it takes a very special kind of determination to “accidentally” kill someone with a spork.

He tries for pinstripes again the next day – a brick red suit, actually, with thin white lining. He can only laugh when the first thing Arthur shoots at, once they’re under, are Eames’ feet, clad in pristine white Oxfords.

It’s not like Eames breaks free from work-appropriate attire. Not once does he show up in something that’s technically disrespectful or sloppy or in any way unprofessional. But he still manages to get to Arthur every single day.

They first time Eames is going to forge in front of his new playmate, his shirt is a dull shade of cranberry and his coat is vividly purple and white plaid.

“Are you colorblind?” Arthur asks as the Somnacin seeps into their veins. Eames grins sleepily.

Arthur doesn’t find him within the dream by the time the Somnacin wears off. Technically it’s only five minutes later that they wake up, Arthur glaring at the ceiling and Eames still smiling widely. They were under for _hours_ and Arthur had been clueless the whole while.

“We’re going under again,” Arthur growls.

Three naps, so to speak, later, Eames takes pity on Arthur.

He sidles up alongside Arthur, who’s stalking down the sidewalk, a deep frown on his face and showing on his forehead. Arthur throws him a glance but keeps on moving, glancing at each projection that goes by.

“Honestly, darling,” Eames begins. He uses his own accent, but this body emits a deeper, richer tone.

Arthur nearly jumps out of his skin, stops walking entirely, so Eames does too, staring down his hooked nose at the now-much-shorter point man.

“You – how are you Eames?” Arthur asks. The bewilderment on his face is almost _precious_.

“Well, you see, Arthur darling,” Eames begins in the patronizing tone Arthur so often uses on him.

“No, no, I get the mechanics of it, you asshole,” Arthur says, waving his hands between them. “I mean – your suit. It… _makes sense_.”

Eames glances down at his wardrobe. The scrawny older man he’s forged into is wearing a primly tailored charcoal three-piece suit topped off with a silk tie and gold cufflinks.

“Indeed,” Eames agrees.

“Asshole,” Arthur repeats. Eames just smiles.

The day of the job itself, Eames opts for a suit that, though it’s tailored magnificently, is positively _royal_ blue. Arthur stares and stares.

The job goes off without a hitch, and Dominic Cobb asks if he can keep Eames on call. Arthur groans audibly.

“Darling, if you wanted my number you could have just asked,” Eames says over his shoulder as he heads out the door.

He works with Arthur and the Cobbs on and off for three years. His sense of dress somehow manages to grow increasingly worse. But the game loses its charm around the same time everything else does: Mal’s death.

When Eames lets himself into the Cobbs’ house, Dom is gone too, and Mal’s parents are there with the children, and Miles just points Eames upstairs.

Arthur is, of course, in the guest room that has basically become his home, but Eames does not expect him to be connected to a PASIV.

When Eames arrives, without a second thought, in Arthur’s dream, nothing is put together.

Eames has been in Arthur’s dreams innumerable times. His mind is all sharp, clean lines and solid colors and right angles, like his suits. This is wrong. This world is torrential wind and crumbling sidewalks and everything is incomplete, like Arthur’s mind hadn’t bothered to finish putting things together before throwing him inside. The buildings are just frames without skin. The projections are clothed, but barely, in haphazardly thrown-together ensembles.

Arthur is sitting on a curb, his feet in the unpaved street. His face is blank, even as Eames sits next to him.

“I can’t find her,” he says hoarsely. “Her projection is gone.”

“Maybe that’s for the best, love,” Eames replies.

They have no idea how right they are. Eames doesn’t wonder until much later if there’s a projection of him roaming about too, and how badly it’s dressed.

He finds out after the funeral, when he appears in Arthur’s dream once more. The buildings have outer walls now, though there aren’t windows or doors.

“You can’t keep doing this,” Eames calls.

“I know,” Arthur replies. He sounds startled. Eames turns to the voice just in time to see the retreating back of a figure that looks much like his own, though the posture and the walk are slightly off – they’re the ones Eames adopts when he’s acting posh or snooty, which he rarely does when he’s not forging. The projection is wearing a dark suit, but the shirt underneath isn’t visible from this distance.

Eames doesn’t comment and neither does Arthur.

“I don’t know where to find Cobb,” he says instead.

“The real one or your projection?”

“Both,” Arthur says, and it’s pained.

“What are you going to do?” Eames asks quietly.

“I don’t know. What are your plans?”

Truthfully Eames doesn’t have plans; he usually doesn’t. He adapts.

“I was thinking I would stay around here a little longer,” he offers.

“And do what?” Arthur asks, and maybe it’s a little petulant.

“There are others in the dream sharing business in LA. It would be possible to find temporary work. D’you think you might like to do that for now?”

They last three months doing odd jobs for individuals who are in the know. The pay is neither here nor there, since they both have plenty of money already. Arthur stays in his apartment close to the Cobbs’ home and Eames rents out a suite in a hotel near Arthur.

Eames dresses well for the first time in almost four years.

It starts off out of tact. Arthur is a shade of himself, withdrawn, and Eames confines himself to dark, muted tones, picks up Arthur each morning with a cup of black coffee and a hand at the center of his back, steady.

It turns into habit. Eames wears a jacket that matches his pants, or a shirt that doesn’t clash with his suit, or a shirt and blazer duo that doesn’t threaten to blind anyone. He might not have a waistcoat on, but hell, his wardrobe is almost as immaculate as Arthur’s by the end of month three.

And Arthur doesn’t even blink.

He barely speaks, just lets Eames pull him here and there, just goes through what becomes their daily routine and does menial jobs with perfect efficiency and doesn’t even blink.

Eames lets them fall into habits, because at least this way he knows Arthur isn’t doing anything else.

And then one day Arthur says, “I need to find Cobb.” The next morning he’s gone.

Eames goes to Mombasa. It’s hot there, and bright and colorful and gorgeous, everything the last three months were not. He wears clothes that don’t feel like forging. He lets himself pick light suits, more comfortable, breezy outfits, well-suited to the heat. He chooses colors that aren’t dull and tired, instead opting for pastels that match the skyline, sandy tones of the desert, vivid, rich materials that stand the fuck out.

When Cobb finds him, he’s wearing pink. Eames crosses his legs, leaning against the windowsill and looking down when Cobb brings up Arthur.

His socks, peeking out past the cuff of his thin pants, are a rich pink tone that compliments his shirt.

“Arthur.” He lets the name roll off his tongue for the first time in at least a year. “You’re still working with that old stick in the mud.”

He doesn’t think the inception will work. He doesn’t think Cobb is sane, in all honesty. But where Cobb is, so is Arthur.

Arthur is borderline _divine_ in crisp beige pants and a brown waistcoat, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and jacket nowhere in sight as he organizes one of the desks dispersed across the warehouse. He looks… alive, maybe even normal as he instructs the small girl next to him on how to self-inject Somnacin.

“Well hello, gorgeous,” Eames says casually, leering a bit. “I don’t believe I’ve met your friend.” He winks at the girl, who throws Arthur a furtive glance. Arthur barely reacts, doesn’t even glance up from the IV he’s loading up.

“Eames, this is Ariadne, our new architect. Ariadne, this is Eames. Don’t listen to anything he says.” Ariadne just raises her eyebrows.

“Oh, tosh, love. I’m much more honest than you’ll ever be.”

“Most people would call that rude, actually.”

“What’s rude is not letting me introduce myself properly. Hello, pet. I’m the forger, and therefore infinitely better company than this uptight creature could ever be.”

Ariadne shakes his hand, trying and failing to hide her amusement as Arthur finally looks up. He makes a choked sound.

“I think I am actually morally offended by the shirt you are wearing.”

Eames is sporting some terrible paisley thing that’s been hiding in the back of his closet just in case. There are at least six different colors, one of which is a dreadfully neon yellow.

“Come now, darling, I can’t exactly allow you to tear it off of me in front of the children, now can I?” Ariadne snorts. Cobb, from somewhere across the warehouse, sighs loudly, Yusuf chuckling away next to him.

“Is that why you wear such horrible things? Are you tempting me to forcibly remove them?” He leans across then, bracing himself with one hand, and whispers, “Because it’s almost working. Almost.”

Eames simply raises his eyebrows when Arthur pulls away. Any other reaction – confusion at the very least because _what the fucking fuck_ – he buries for now. Ariadne is glancing between them almost comically, but Arthur just goes back to his work.

Eames wears a multitude of stripes the next day. He wears prints that border on tribal. He wears a fuckton of orange. There’s banter, some bitching back and forth as they try to figure out how the hell to get inception to work, but Arthur remains entirely professional.

Until they’re under.

There’s no time to think because Arthur’s fucked up and undoubtedly torturing himself over it and Saito is dying, spiraling toward limbo as they speak, and Eames is Peter Browning, and then they’re loading up the van and there’s no fucking _time_ but Arthur pulls Eames away after Cobb stalks off to get Saito strapped into his seat. Arthur grabs him by the goddamn suspenders and hauls him off to the side.

“If you die and go to limbo,” Eames says, “or if I do –”

“Shut the fuck up,” Arthur hisses against his lips, and then he kisses him, hard and quick. “Listen to me, you asshole. None of my projections can match anymore.”

“Mine all look like prissy squares,” Eames replies.

“You’re the worst,” Arthur continues. “Sometimes I can’t even look at my projection of you. The patterns turn into optical illusions.”

Eames lets out a surprised laugh, but Arthur hauls him close by the suspenders.

“Look at you,” Arthur says. “You dreamt yourself in Armani, you fucker. You just dress like an imbecile to get to me.”

“Honestly, Arthur, I thought you were smart. How did it take you this long to figure it out?”

Arthur kisses him again, short but bruising.

“Don’t die, or I’ll kill you.”

Eames snorts and runs after him back to the van. Then he’s Browning, and then he’s a long-limbed, doe-eyed blonde thing, and then he’s tumbling down mountains and setting off fucking explosions and being thrown over balconies, and then he’s trying to get Fischer back and hoping not to lose anyone else in the process.

Nobody dies, miraculously. Everyone wakes up. Everyone is fine. They’re in America. They all split up at the airport. Eames goes to a hotel nearby, takes a few sips from a tiny bottle of expensive liquor in the mini fridge, brushes his teeth, and gets dressed.

He shows up at Arthur’s apartment wearing the paisley shirt and maroon slacks. They’re on the floor, literally ripped to pieces, moments later. His socks are neon yellow too. Arthur throws them in the fireplace, and then throws Eames down onto the bed.


End file.
